"2 Quantum Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

PETER F. HAMILTON
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he said. Douglas Kellam, who fancied himself in the role of local squire, the village's loudest anti-PSP Momus. Now it was safe to speak out.
'From the rear, yes,' she agreed.
He grunted wryly. 'Who would have thought it, you and I rushing to rescue an appanuchik.'
'But we are though, aren't we? Instinctively. It's not so much what Collister was, but what Kellam's mob will do. There'll be hell to pay the morning after, there always is.'
'Yeah.'
'But?'
'What if he turns out to be one of the high grades?'
'He won't,' she said firmly. 'You would have known if he was anything important.'
'Now there's confidence.' He hoped to God she was right. The EMC Ranger lurched out on to the road. Eleanor gunned the accelerator, wheels tearing gashes in the tarmac's thin moss covering. Fans of white spray fountained up as they shot through the long puddles which lay along the ruts.
Greg looked out of the window. On the other side of the reservoir's broad southern prong he could see the Berrybut Spinney time-share estate sitting on the slope directly opposite the farmhouse. It was set in a rectangular clearing above the shoreline, a horseshoe of wooden chalets with a big stone clubhouse and hotel at the apex. The spinney was a mix of dead trunks festooned with creepers and new trees, tanbark oaks, Californian laurels, Chinese yews, and other varieties imported from tropical and sub-tropical zones as the year-round heat killed off native vegetation. Their shapes and colours were strange in comparison to the glorious old deciduous forests which occupied so many of his childhood memories.
The hurriedly enacted One Home Law had enabled the 1 Local council to commandeer the chalets and hotel to provide ~ emergency accommodation for people displaced from lowlying coas% lands by rising seas. He had spent the PSP Jecade living in one of the chalets, telling people he was a private detective, a perfect cover occupation for someone with
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his ability. He even managed to attract a few paying cases to add authenticity. Then a couple of years after the P5P's demise Eleanor came into his life, and at the same time the gigantic Event Horizon company hired him to clear up a security violation problem. The case had turned out to be far more complex and involved than anyone had realized at the start, and the bonuses and favours he and Eleanor were given by its extremely grateful owner, Julia Evans, were enough to retire on - enough for their grandchildren to retire on, come to that. Multi-billionairesses, especially teenage ones, he reflected, had no concept of gracious restraint, certainly not when it came to money.
It left him and Eleanor with the problem of what to do next. Lotus eating was fine, they both agreed, providing it was in the context of a break from real life. They had sunk some (a fraction) of their money into the run-down farmhouse with its neglected fields, and moved in after their honeymoon, both of them eager for the kind of quiet yet busy life the citrus groves would give them.
He could see a pile of ash just below the chalets, a pink glow still visible. The residents lit a bonfire each night, using it to bake food, and as a focal point for company. An undemanding style of life; not quite the archetypical poor but happy existence, but damn close. Geography wasn't all the move across the water entailed.


A horse-drawn cart, piled high with bales of hay, was clumpmg slowly down Hambleton's main street as they drove in. Eleanor swerved round it smoothly, drawing a frightened whmny from the mud-caked shire horse and a shaken fist from the driver. If it wasn't for the glossy black solar panels clipped over the slate roofs and a clump of well-established coconut trees in the churchyard the hamlet could have passed as a rural scene from the nineteen-hundreds. Gardens seemed to merge lazily into the verges. Tall stumps of copper beech and sycamore trees lined the road, festooned in vines which dangled colourful flower clusters; a frost of greenery which
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brought a semblance of life to the dead trunks. But only from a distance; wind, entropy, and vigorous insects had already pruned away the twigs and smaller branches, leaving frayed ends of pale-grey sun-bleached wood jutting out of the shaggy hide.
Roy Collister's home was one of the smaller cottages a couple of hundred metres from the Finch's Arms. It personified the retirement-cottage dream; gentrified during the end of the last century, yellow-grey stonework pointed up, windows double-glazed, brick chimney-stacks repaired. More recently it had acquired a row of solar panels above the guttering to provide power after the gas and electricity grids were shut down at the start of the PSP years. Three bulky air conditioners had been mounted on the side wall to cope with the stifling air which invariably saturated the interior of pre-Warming buildings. The front garden was given over to vegetable plots, and the fence had disappeared under a long mound of gene-tailored brambles, with clumps of ripe blackberries as large as crab-apples hanging loosely.
Greg was already opening his door as Eleanor drew up outside. He was vaguely aware of pale faces in the windows of the houses opposite, interested and no doubt appalled by what was going on, but not doing anything about it. The English way, Greg reflected. People had learned to keep their heads down during the PSP decade, avoiding attention was a healthy survival trait while the Constables were on the prowl. A habit like that was hard to snuff.
The wooden gate through the dune of brambles was swinging slowly to and fro on its hinges, and two of the ground-floor bay windows had been smashed. When he reached the front door he saw the wood around the lock was splintered; judging by the marks on the paintwork someone had taken a sledgehammerto it. There was the sound ofangryvoices inside.
Greg walked into the hail and ordered a low-level secretion from his gland. As always, he pictured a lozenge of liver-like flesh nestled rumour-fashion at the heart of his brain, squirting out cold milky liquids into surrounding synapses. In fact, neither gland nor neurohormones looked anything like the
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mental mirage, but he'd never quite managed to throw off the idiosyncrasy - Mindstar psychologists had told him not to worry, a lot of psychics developed quirks of a much higher order. His perception shifted subtly, making the universe just that fraction lighter, more translucent. Auras seemed to prevail, even in inert matter, their misty planes corresponding to the physical structures around him. Living creatures glowed. A world comprising coloured shadows.
There were twelve people in the lounge, making the small room seem oppressively crowded and stuffy. Greg recognized most of them. Villagers, that same quiet friendly bunch in the pub each night. Frankie Owen, the local professional doledependant and fish poacher, leaning on his sledgehammer, resting after a bout of singularly mindless destruction. He had set about the furniture, smashing up the Queen Anne coffee table and oak-veneered secretaire and dresser; the three-metre flatscreen on the wall had a big frost star dead centre. Expressing himself the only way he knew how. Mark Sutton and Andrew Foster, powerful men who worked as labourers in the groves, were sitting on Roy Collister behind the overturned settee. The slightly built solicitor's clothes were torn, his face had been reduced to pulped flesh, cuts weeping blood on to the beige carpet.
Clare Collister was being held by Les Hepburn and Ronnie Kay. Greg hadn't seen much of her since he moved into the farm, she didn't venture out very often; an ordinarily prim thirty-five-year-old, with rusty brown hair and a long face. She had obviously been struggling hard, one eye was bruised, swelling badly, her blouse was torn, revealing her left breast. Les Hepburn had a vicious grip on the back of her head, knuckles white with the strain of forcing her to watch her husband being beaten.
And of course, Douglas Kellam, chief cheerleader, standing in the tight circle of onlookers, a forty-five-year-old with a round face, slender moustache and fading brown hair; dressed in blue trousers and white shirt, thin green tie. Smart and respectable even now, although his face was flushed from the kind of exhilaration Greg was wearily familiar with: the
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thrill of the illicit. Douglas was the descendant of the original Victorian toff, a master of duplicity. Perfectly suited to attending a charity dinner then going on to a pit-bull fight, watching Globecast's Euroblue channel at night, condemning it by day.
The jeering and shouting cut off dead as Greg stepped into the lounge. Andrew Sutton froze with a fist cocked in midair, his knuckles wet with Collister's blood, looking up at Greg, suddenly pathetic with guilt.
With his espersense expanded, the group's emotions impinged directly into Greg's synapses, a clamour of blood-lust and anger and secret guilt. They were feeding off each other, building up a collective nerve for the finale. It would end with a shot-gun blast, the cottage set on fire, consuming bodies and direct evidence. And the police would turn a blind eye; overstretched, undermanned, and still trying to regain public trust, to shake off the association with the People's Constables. They couldn't afford to be seen taking sides with PSP relics.
'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' Greg asked, and there was no need to force a tired tone into his voice, it came all too easily.
'The bastard's Party, Greg,' someone called.
'No messing? Have you seen his card? Was it signed by President Armstrong himself?' He was aware of Eleanor coming to stand behind him. Her presence sparked off a ripple of severe agitation in the minds around him.
'He's guilty, Greg. The Inquisitors said he was an apparatchik over in Market Harborough.'
'Ah.. .' he said. The Inquisitors (actually, the Inappropriate Appointee Investigation Bureau) had been set up by the New Conservative government to purge PSP appointees from Civil Service posts, where it was feared they would deliberately misuse their positions to stir up trouble in their own interest. Identifying them had turned out to be an almost impossible task, a lot of records had been lost or destroyed when the PSP fell. Nearly all the old Party's premier grades had been routed out, they were notorious enough in their own areas for the Inquisitor teams not to need official data-
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work; but the small fry, the invisible Party hacks who did the committees' groundwork, they were hard to pin down. A lot of suspect names had been leaking from the Inquisitors' office lately. Rough justice eradicated the tricky problem of no verifiable evidence.
'An official charge has been brought against him, has it?' Greg asked.
'No,' Douglas Kellam said. 'But we've heard. Bytes that came straight from the top.' His voice changed to a slicker, more appealing tone. In his mind there was still the hope that he could win through, a refusal to admit defeat. And nervousness that was beginning to churn up through his subconscious, like all of them, all disqweted by Greg and the infamous gland.
Sometimes, Greg reflected, an unending diet of tabloid crap could be useful. He smiled humourlessly. 'Sure they did. Your cousin's friend's sister, was it?'
'Come on, Greg. He's Red trash, for Christ's sake. You don't want him around Hambleton. You of all people.'